What if I gave away all my money?

During the confected seriousness of graduation day at the University of Queensland,
Graeme Wood
was invited to give an address.

The internet entrepreneur turned philanthropist had just been awarded an honorary doctorate in economics from his old university.

It was a fitting tribute for the newly anointed “Dr Wood", who is after all one UQ’s great success stories – a scholarship student who amassed a $330 million fortune and then to set about giving most of it away.

Custom usually sees the recipient of such an award extol the virtues of their chosen degree and then explain how it guided them through life. But that is not how Wood operates.

“The best thing I have ever done for the profession of economics was to have never worked as an economist," he told the graduating class earlier this month.

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This neatly encapsulates Wood. He enjoys gently poking fun at the establishment and extends the same sort of deprecation to his own efforts. He appears not to take either accolades or strident attacks too seriously.

Just as well, because this unusual businessman has stepped onto very hot ground indeed and he will need excellent walking shoes. For Woods has taken a political side. This in itself is not strange, it’s more the side he’s picked that is. Wood decided to help the Greens get into government and is given the credit by Greens leader
Bob Brown
for delivering them control of the Senate. Wood is now identified as a maverick in conventional Australian business terms. And he is also now a very large target for the right, who stand to lose from Wood’s conversion to the cause of their political foe.

It’s been a whirlwind journey in just over 12 months as Wood has gone from being the wealthy but relatively unknown founder of travel website
Wotif.com
to the poster child of the Australian left.

There is hardly an enlightened cause he does not support.

He funds programs to encourage youth participation in poetry, opera and theatre, while supporting semi- commercial projects for independent recording artists, investigative journalism and the regeneration of native bushland.

But two recent deals stand out and delivered him the dubious pleasures that attend controversy. He finds himself listening to a cacophany of noise as praise from the left competes with denigration from the right.

The first deal was teaming up earlier this month with
Jan Cameron
, founder of camping gear retailer Kathmandu, to buy the Triabunna woodchip mill in south-eastern Tasmania for $10 million.

With that single transaction the pair have effectively killed off old- growth logging in much of the state – an outcome the green movement has spent three decades trying to achieve.

The other deal that forced Wood out of obscurity was the $1.6 million he gave the Australian Greens before the federal election to fund a TV advertising campaign. It was the single largest political donation in Australia history and almost certainly ensured the Greens won the balance of power in the Senate.

These two deeds have incensed Tasmanian Liberal senator
Eric Abetz
and many others on the hard right. Abetz is calling for an inquiry with the powers of a royal commission to investigate the connection between Wood and the Greens.

Abetz says such an inquiry would “remove the stench and secrecy surrounding the recent dealings over Tasmanian forestry".

For his part, Wood can barely bother raising the energy to laugh off Abetz’s suggestion. He says an inquiry would take about “five minutes" and thinks the whole thing is pretty funny.

“It is really entertaining to see how cranky some people get," Wood says.

“Eric Abetz grinding his teeth is a very pleasant sound for me."

You get the sense that part of Abetz’s outrage comes from a feeling that Wood should be one of them. He is a natural Liberal – a businessman from Queensland who is self made and prospered from a booming economy when the Coalition was in power.

Instead, Wood has embraced the Greens and now revels in mocking the Liberal Party. His droll humour and self-effacement might suggest a lack of purpose or even direction in his philanthropy, but that could not be further from the truth.

Wood is, by his own admission, ruthlessly strategic. He has just returned from a trip to the United States to see how the world’s best give away their fortunes.

And that’s because giving the vast majority of his away is exactly what he plans to do.

He says his three children from his first marriage will be “comfortable enough" but he does not believe in giving them “stupid amounts of money".

Wood is also not a believer in nepotism, so none of them works at Wotif.com or any of his charitable endeavours.

“I just think it’s a bad idea," he says. “Everyone should find their own way."

Wood has certainly forged a unique path and his donation to the Greens is hardly typical of Australian corporate philanthropy, but it is not woolly do-gooding either. He saw the $1.6 million donation as a defensive move that saved him many millions of dollars.

“I was a bit concerned that if the Coalition got in a lot of my investments in environmental causes would have been down the plughole," he says.

“It will hopefully save me a whole lot of money in fighting other environmental wars or battles."

For Wood it really is that simple. With the Greens holding the balance of power they will force Labor to spend more money preserving the environment, which means he will need to spend less.

In the 12 months since the federal election his investment has delivered handsomely.

Not only is Australia close to putting a price on carbon pollution, but the government has set aside billions of dollars for renewable energy and biodiversity.

Only this the week the Commonwealth also announced an $8 million contribution towards the purchase of a cattle station near Alice Springs which will be destocked and regenerated.

Wood says his donation was about “putting a spanner in the works".

“I was trying to pull up the two major parties and say there are other ways to run a country," he says.

“It gives the Greens the opportunity to prove they are a real third force in Australian politics and it reflected my view that the two main parties were increasingly dysfunctional and the level of political debate was abysmal."

The strategic thinking behind the donation was that support for the Greens usually declines by between 2 and 5 percentage points in the final weeks of a campaign, as the two main parties spend up big on television advertising.

In a tight Senate race it is the difference between picking up two or three seats. With a view to countering this late slump, Wood approached Greens leader
Bob Brown
with his idea and costings for an ad campaign.

Brown was hardly going to say no. “He came to talk to me about the donation," Brown says. “He told me there were a lot of people in business who didn’t support either of the major parties."

Brown says his first contact with Wood came a few years back when he purchased an endangered wilderness area on Tasmania’s Que River.

“It was about to be logged and I just thought ‘what a wonderful thing’," Brown says. “He is bringing a remarkably strategic mind to reorientating the Tasmanian economy."

This is the larger theme that commentators and politicians are trying to glean from Wood’s dealings in Tasmania.

His purchase of the Triabunna mill has been likened to “financial activism" and even a new “movement", but once again the man himself is somewhat sceptical.

Wood says “rich pricks buying things" is hardly new, but he doubts it’s the start of a new movement. “If it’s a movement then it’s a pretty tiny one," he says.

Wood says his purchase of the mill with Cameron is an investment, but a “very long-term one".

In the short term he stands ready to reopen the mill, but only if the industry is serious about making the transition away from old growth or high conservation value forests.

“There are plantations nearby but in the longer term we need to see if they are the best use of land," he says.

Such comments will probably further infuriate Abetz and Tasmania’s pro-logging faction, which is worried about “outsiders" taking jobs out of the state.

But Wood does not see Tasmania’s future tied to industrial- scale logging, but rather in cool- climate wine, cheese, quality produce, whisky and nature-based tourism.

“Part of the big vision, if you like, would be a walk that went down the whole east coast of Tasmania," Wood says.

He sees the area around Triabunna, just an hour from Hobart airport, as Melbourne’s back yard.

As for the 48 hectare mill site and surrounding leases, Wood is planning an eco-tourism venture utilising the site’s deepwater port. He sees it as a destination for small cruise boats and yachts returning from the Sydney to Hobart race.

“There is nowhere else for them to call in," he says.

As Wood sees it, Tasmania can’t have it both ways.

He says roads clogged with logging trucks do not fit with the image of small wineries and artesan cheese producers.

It’s hardly surprising then that he’s also not a supporter of Gunns’ $2.3 billion proposed Bell Bay pulp mill in the state’s north.

“There are plantations in Tasmania, so to add value to those trees would be sensible, but is the pulp mill the best way to go? I’m not sure," he says.

“There are other uses for fibre which are lower impact, like ethanol plants or a veneer factory."

Indeed, it was the pulp mill itself that pushed Wood to take an interest in politics, a subject he had previously shunned.

“The thing that tipped me with the Tasmanian forests was the whole pulp mill thing … I thought the whole process was rotten," he says.

“That’s when I realised you needed to have some political clout if you are going to change things. You have to be able to influence politicians somehow."

The difference between Wood and many other political donors, however, is that he is not wanting to personally benefit from government decisions. That said, Abetz has accused Brown of shamelessly advocating for Wood’s commercial interests. He said Brown sought to undermine a rival bid by a local contractor, Aprin, for the chip mill that would have kept it open over the long term.

Brown has shrugged off such suggestions and says Wood is not looking to cash in.

“He’s interested in human good and the environment," Brown says.

Making more money at this point is certainly not a priority for Wood. The serial entrepreneur says he shies away from business ventures these days.

“I try and avoid it. If I make more money I just have to give it away," he says.

This realisation of having “enough" gives Wood a relaxed air of contentment, perhaps because the 64-year-old has little else to prove. He’s certainly independently wealthy.

Dividends alone from his 22 per cent stake in Wotif.com earned him more than $10.4 million in the 2010 financial year.

And while Wotif.com stock has fallen in recent months as Australians take more overseas holidays, the company remains the market leader.

Over the past five years its revenue has more than doubled to $133 million, helped by its purchases of rival sites including AsiaWebDirect.com, lastminute. com.au and travel.com.au.

Wood remains a non-executive director of the company after handing over management control in 2007. Wotif.com chief executive
Robbie Cooke
says the company was Graeme’s baby.

“He and the other founders let go of their baby and handed it over to all of us to run," Cooke says.

“He remains very active in our strategic direction, but leaves the day-to-day operations to me and the team."

That has freed up Wood to focus on philanthropy.

The Graeme Wood Foundation gives away about $1 million a year, but that is just the start.

Wood is also the major donor of the yet-to-be-launched Global Mail, a news site devoted to quality independent journalism.

He has underwritten the project for five years and expects it will cost about $15 million.

“It will be global and look at business, politics and the arts," he says.

Wood says his commitment is “pure philanthropy" initially, but does see potential for a partial pay wall in the future.

“I think it’s worth occupying this space and seeing what happens," he says. “If other things fade away the intelligent reader might say I have to pay to get this type of stuff."

Wood says he’s always been interested in journalism, and by coincidence his second wife is Annettte Olle, the widow of the late ABC journalist Andrew Olle.

Wood also founded Wild Mob, which organises volunteer groups to restore wilderness areas. Combined with this he has made a string of commitments to the arts.

“I forget half the crowds I have been involved with."

But his single largest donation to date has been the $15 million he gave last year to help establish the Global Change Institute at UQ.

The institute will focus on the challenges of population growth, climate change and technology.

Wood is a director of the institute and also chairs the university’s endowment fund. But he says his honorary doctorate had nothing to do with all the money he gave the university.